a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and, more particularly, relates to an electronic musical instrument having performance manipulators such as a keyboard, pedals and so on, and capable of imitatively generating the tone color of a selected musical instrument such as a piano or the like.
b) Description of the Related Art
In general, a piano as a natural musical instrument has three pedals, namely, a right pedal, a center pedal and a left pedal. The right pedal serves as a damper pedal having a function for controlling the release rate of an envelope in a musical tone. The center pedal serves as a sostenuto pedal having a function for controlling the decay characteristic of a musical tone. The left pedal serves as a soft pedal having a function for controlling the tone color of a musical tone. By using the three pedals respectively, an expression is given to a generated musical tone.
An electronic musical instrument can generate musical tones with various tone colors. Also in this type electronic musical instrument, it has been proposed that predetermined effects are given to a generated musical tone by using such pedals. For example, some electronic piano has left, center and right pedals. Such an electronic piano may further have a pedal mode switch for selecting a pedal function to assign the left pedal for one of functions such as an soft effect function, an autoplay starting/stopping function, an introduction/ending performance function, a solo style performance function, a tempo down function, a bass bend down function, etc. and assign the center pedal for one of functions such as a sostenuto on/off function, a tempo up function, a bass bend up function, etc.
The sostenuto effect is seldom used except for the tone color of a piano. Accordingly, the center pedal is seldom used except for the tone color of a piano.